An emergency comes up short

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA

I shivered and trembled when I first heard that President Bola Tinubu had declared a security emergency all over the country in the wake of terrorists’ killing of an Army General and the upsurge in kidnapping of schoolgirls and church worshippers in four far-flung states. I waited the next minute to hear that he had removed all 36 state governors and the FCT Minister and has replaced them with Ibok-Ete Ekwe Ibas style Military Administrators. In my mind’s eye, I already saw thousands of State Assembly members packing their bags and heading to their hometowns, there to cool their heels for six months as the Rivers State Assemblymen did. I also imagined the scramble that had already started among retired military, naval, air force and even police officers for appointment as Sole Administrators of states.

Nigeria now has thousands, if not tens of thousands, of retired military officers. In the 29 years when this country was under military rule, the most coveted phrase in the barracks was for an officer to get “military posting to a political appointment” as governor, minister, head of a juicy agency or even as an ADC. Even Chairman of a petroleum distribution tax force was coveted in those days. Since 1999, about the only non-military post left in the hands of soldiers is Director General of NYSC, which has been zoned to the Army Education Corps. Our soldiers have been out of power for 26 years now, and thousands of ex-soldiers salivated at Vice Admiral Ibas’ good fortune when he returned as Sole Administrator, for that matter of a juicy state like Rivers, to rule free from restraint and pressure from State Assemblymen, party officials or even voters. Ibas was much luckier than one of his Chief of Naval Staff successors, who had to struggle to secure a plot of Abuja land by posting armed sailors to protect it from FCDA bulldozers.

Alas, President Tinubu did no such thing last week. He kept quiet over the fate of governors under a national security emergency. Which must have made the restored Rivers State Governor Simi Fubara to wonder, “I was suspended for six months because of a political quarrel, when there was no kidnapping in my state. If Niger Delta militants had carted 300 schoolchildren into the creeks, I probably would have been suspended for my whole term.”

Many lawyers argued when Fubara was suspended that the 1999 Constitution did not envisage such a scenario. But since the Supreme Court sat on its hands for six months and refused to take up the case filed by PDP-controlled state governments, we still do not have a judicial pronouncement on this matter. It can therefore happen again. The thirty six governors escaped the hammer this time maybe because they are too many. Probably also because some busybody activists will say, if all governors are suspended due to insecurity, the Presidency and National Assembly should be suspended as well, since in any case all the security agencies are Federal.

Lack of mass suspensions apart, I also thought what the Constitution actually envisages in a state of emergency is the suspension of certain constitutional rights and liberties, such as of movement, association, gathering etc. No such thing was done in last week’s declaration. Here in the Third World, we do not really set much store on constitutional liberties. Any state governor or Police Commissioner can just wake up and stop citizens from going out of their houses because of environmental sanitation or because of an election. In other climes, no one can take away such constitutional liberties without declaration of a state of emergency, but here, it is seen as a minor issue.

Now, the most physical manifestation of a state of emergency in our clime is to flood the place with soldiers. In 2004 when President Obasanjo clamped emergency rule on Plateau State and suspended Governor Joshua Dariye, he flooded the state with security agents. It rapidly brought tit-for-tat sectarian killings to an end. In 2013 too when President Jonathan clamped a state of emergency on the three North Eastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa [without removing the governors], he also moved thousands of soldiers and security agents into the arena. Borno State Government innovatively contributed the Civilian JTF, native civilians with the highest motivation. As a result, Boko Haram insurgents were quickly driven out of Maiduguri and into Sambisa Forest, Mandara Mountains and Lake Chad islets.

The security emergency declared last week did not spell out a lot of measures to be taken, perhaps deliberately. Government cannot lay all its cards on the table, only for the terrorists and bandits to pre-empt it. One announced measure however is that there will be mass recruitment of soldiers and policemen in order to augment their current numbers. Almost all Army Generals and security experts who spoke in the last decade said troop numbers are not enough to meet the upsurge of crime in the country. Ideally, internal security is the duty of the police but when they couldn’t cope, soldiers were brought in all over the country. They, too have so far been unable to nip insurgency and banditry in the bud, at least partly due to insufficient numbers.

If the mass recruitment begins now, it will still take some time to train, properly orient, equip and deploy the new cops and soldiers. Mass recruitment also has its pitfalls. In the current climate of high unemployment, undesirable elements may sneak into the forces and become a problem down the road. Back in 2000AD when President Obasanjo told the police to recruit 40,000 more men, I went into Kaduna’s Badarawa area one night and saw a group of young men and women laughing heartily. What was amusing? They told me that the most notorious boy in Badarawa had just been recruited into the police! I tried to calm them down by saying that with adequate training, even a young criminal could be turned into a law enforcement officer. The key word there is “adequate.”

In the presidential statement containing the emergency declaration, the President appealed to Fulani cultural groups to drop their arms, stop open grazing of cattle and move towards ranching, which he said is the way to go. Many problems with this “appeal.” To begin with, the socio-cultural groups such as Miyetti Allah have no weapons and no control over the herders who own weapons. The first herders to move from owning sticks to acquiring firearms said they did so to protect themselves from cattle rustlers. But as we saw in other climes, firearms acquire a logic of their own. Once you acquire one for self-defence, you could just as easily slip into attack mode, as we have seen with the rise of industrial-scale banditry and kidnapping in the last 15 years.

Equally opaque is the appeal to herders to stop open cattle grazing. Some people even tried to stampede the government last week by misquoting the Minister of Livestock Development, saying he announced a nation-wide ban on open cattle grazing. When he clarified that he did not say that, some newspapers said “government has withdrawn its ban on open grazing.” Open cattle grazing is hundreds of years old and there are millions of people involved, with at least 20 million cattle heads in Nigeria, in addition to millions of sheep and goats. Ending it will require the steady implementation of a comprehensive national plan with short, medium and long term goals and timelines. “Urging” herders to move to ranching will not do unless the ranching facilities are adequately provided, complete with fodder, water, security, vet services and marketing facilities. Once they see the advantages, they will gradually move into it. Only that, by the time Texas-style ranching is in full swing, the Nigerians who are the first to say “end open grazing” will turn around and blame the government for the high cost of meat.

The President also said last week that National Assembly should change laws so that states that desire to have state police forces could have them. On such a serious matter, there should be a very clear direction, beginning with a constitutional amendment. Is it not chaotic if some states have state police and others don’t? Either all or none of them should have state police, and we should clearly demarcate the duties of state and Federal police. Who should do the recruitment, lest one state governor [name withheld] simply upgrades his political thugs into state police?